Athenian is the expounder; they only supply information when asked about
the institutions of their respective countries. A kind of simplicity or
stupidity is ascribed to them. At first, they are dissatisfied with the
free criticisms which the Athenian passes upon the laws of Minos and
Lycurgus, but they acquiesce in his greater experience and knowledge of
the world. They admit that there can be no objection to the enquiry; for
in the spirit of the legislator himself, they are discussing his laws
when there are no young men present to listen. They are unwilling to
allow that the Spartan and Cretan lawgivers can have been mistaken
in honouring courage as the first part of virtue, and are puzzled at
hearing for the first time that 'Goods are only evil to the evil.'
Several times they are on the point of quarrelling, and by an effort
learn to restrain their natural feeling (compare Shakespeare, Henry V,
act iii. sc. 2). In Book vii., the Lacedaemonian expresses a momentary
irritation at the accusation which the Athenian brings against the
Spartan institutions, of encouraging licentiousness in their women,
but he is reminded by the Cretan that the permission to criticize them
freely has been given, and cannot be retracted. His only criterion of
truth is the authority of the Spartan lawgiver; he is 'interested,'
in the novel speculations of the Athenian, but inclines to prefer the
ordinances of Lycurgus.

The three interlocutors all of them speak in the character of old
men, which forms a pleasant bond of union between them. They have the
feelings of old age about youth, about the state, about human things in
general. Nothing in life seems to be of much importance to them; they
are spectators rather than actors, and men in general appear to the
Athenian speaker to be the playthings of the Gods and of circumstances.
Still they have a fatherly care of the young, and are deeply impressed
by sentiments of religion. They would give confidence to the aged by an
increasing use of wine, which, as they get older, is to unloose their
tongues and make them sing. The prospect of the existence of the soul
after death is constantly present to them; though they can hardly be
said to have the cheerful hope and resignation which animates Socrates
in the Phaedo or Cephalus in the Republic. Plato appears to be
expressing his own feelings in remarks of this sort. For at the time of
writing the first book of the Laws he was at least seventy-four